


Gravity

by hockeyho



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, But kinda in reverse, Established Relationship, Experimental Style, Groundhog Day, M/M, not sure if this counts as explicit but tagging as such just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeyho/pseuds/hockeyho
Summary: Jun wakes up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. Where did he go?
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Chwe Hansol | Vernon, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo/Kim Mingyu, Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 19
Kudos: 66





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ: 
> 
> In order not to spoil the story I have decided to refrain tagging specifically but please know some archive warning(s) apply so if any of them bother you too much please don't read this!
> 
> I hope you'll all stay happy and healthy! If you continue reading, I hope you enjoy.

Jun slammed the trunk of their old silver kia with a definitive thud as he finished packing in the last of his and Minghao’s supplies for the long weekend, the silly thing was rather finicky and if it wasn’t closed hard enough it had a tendency to pop back open at the most inconvenient times. Their duffle bags lay tucked beside the box of treats Junhui’s mum had sent in her latest care package which they’d been tasked to bring along, as the others had begged for some of the Chinese goodies. He took a quick glance at the miserable cloudy sky, winter darkening it far too quickly for his liking, before sliding into the passenger seat beside Minghao.

They had all decided to rent a cabin as a way to celebrate for Joshua, who wanted to do something fun for the western new year on the 1st. Joshua was more accustomed to this than the lunar new year but didn’t have the time or money to fly back to LA. Having pooled their resources together their friend group had been able to find an accommodation tucked away in a remote corner of the woods a couple hours away from Seoul, which could actually comfortably fit the whole lot of them - quite a feat when you have thirteen people to account for. The couples would of course be bunking together and Shua, Seokmin, and Chan would be sharing the extra room. 

They had split up into three cars with Minghao, Seungcheol, and Jeonghan each driving one of them. Although his boyfriend was quite a competent driver, Jun wished they could’ve set out a little earlier as at this point it would probably be completely dark by the time they arrived at their destination. Unfortunately, real life got in the way and this was the earliest time that everyone had been available. He gently placed his hand over Minghao’s cool one that was resting on top of the gear shift and slowly rubbed his thumb across the smooth expanse of skin. Jun blamed Minghao’s tendency to get cold easily on the other’s skinniness, claiming there was no fat on his body to warm the poor boy up. So, as a good boyfriend, Jun had quickly appointed himself the role of Minghao’s personal portable heater. Actually, to be honest he had decided on the role before the pair had ever been dating, it was just a much easier task now that the younger allowed a lot more skinship from him. With his right hand he swiftly connected his phone and switched on his “happy fun times” playlist whilst Minghao quietly steered the car onto the residential street.

They picked up Soonyoung and Chan in succession with the former bearing a cooler full of alcohol which was set in the trunk whilst the latter had an armful of snacks for the drive. They departed amidst contented chatter and turned for the woods. Jun was a bit surprised that Soonyoung had insisted that their dance group travel together over finding a spot with Jihoon as the two of them had only become an official couple a few weeks ago. He wasn’t complaining though, Chan and Soonyoung had been the first people he had befriended when he first came to Korea as an international student at Pledis University, and as such he naturally felt very close to them. Smiling to himself, Jun recalled some of the fond memories he had formed over the last few years with them. Moving to Korea had been the best idea he’d ever had despite his initial fears and hesitancy.

“What’re you smiling about, huh?” Chan questioned fondly as he leaned forward to hand feed Minghao an apple slice out of the ziplock baggie he was carrying. 

“Nothing, just love you guys,” he answered honestly, eyes crinkling with his smile.

“Aw! We love you too, Jun-ah!” the youngest replied as he stretched to ruffle Jun’s hair cheekily.

“ _Jun-ah_?! Ya! Lee Chan, I’m older than you! Don’t they teach you any manners in this country?” the elder squawked with mock indignance as he twisted to face the back, trying to grab at Chan to enact his revenge.

“Maknae on top!” Chan shouted back gleefully, bursting into evil giggles as he leaned backed into the corner of his seat, scrunching himself up as he and tried to stay away from the fingers that were attempting to tickle him - a feat made easier by the fact that he was the shortest person in the car. “Soonyoung hyung, help me! Junnie’s trying to attack me!”

“ _Junnie hyung!_ Where’s this disrespect coming from? Young-ah, he needs teaching a lesson,” Jun replied from the front seat.

“Hmm… I don’t know...” Soonyoung pondered, as he brought a hand up to his chin, miming thinking hard. “On one hand I should protect my baby,” he said looking at Chan, “but on the other hand, I can’t be responsible for raising demon spawn, this is an angels only household” he continued as he dramatically swung to face Junhui. “What to do? What to do…” he pretended to ponder the situation deeply for another moment before springing forward to join in tickling Chan.

Chan’s giggles transformed into his signature full on belly laughs as the older boys laid an onslaught of tickles wherever they could reach. The golden sound filled the car with mirth. Minghao had pretended to be impartial to the whole situation but was given away by the small smile creeping up on his face as he glanced at the chaotic trio through the rearview mirror. That is until the bag still in Chan’s hand came flying as the youngest seemingly lost all control of his limbs. Apple slices ended up scattered all over Minghao’s poor car, including one which smacked Minghao square in the back of his head painfully, as Chan hadn’t had time to close the bag yet. “Oh my God why am I friends with you idiots?” the Chinese man groaned as he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

“Ohhh! We’re sorry, HaoHao,” Jun soothed as he leaned to place an apologetic kiss on the other’s cheek. 

“Sorry, hyung. I didn’t mean to!” Chan contributed.

“We’ll clean it all up,” Soonyoung added responsibly.

“Hmph! You better,” Minghao pouted, attempting a stern look even though he wasn’t actually all that angry with the others.

“We will baobei, don’t worry,” Junhui replied, slipping in the mandarin pet name as he tried to place another kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek.

“Bleh. Gross. Get away from me, you heathen,” Minghao deadpanned as he leaned slightly away.

“Your heathen though,” Jun smirked as he leaned back into his own seat.

“Me? Xu Minghao? Dating Wen 'Greasy' Junhui? I don’t think so. I have standards, thanks,” the younger mocked as the hand that had previously been pinching his nose came down to gesture to his chest to further his point. The burn causing Soonyoung and Chan to burst out laughing again from the backseat.

As they travelled further from Seoul they began to tire and the chatter died down until eventually Soonyoung and Chan ended up falling asleep on each other in an equally hilarious and adorable way causing Jun and Minghao to giggle quietly from the front of the car. Jun definitely took a couple good snaps of the precious moment to send to the group chat. After he finished sending them and laughing at some of their friend’s responses which he read aloud to his boyfriend, he switched the music over to some of Minghao’s coffee shop-esque slow jazz to fit the atmosphere better. He placed his hand back over Minghao’s where it had been at the start of the drive and smiled at his boyfriend, sharing a quick warm gaze before the other shifted his attention back to the road.

Another 45 minutes or so later, they finally reached their destination seeing Jeonghan’s red car already parked in the driveway ahead of them. Jun turned to wake the sleeping pair who had somehow managed to drool on each other without waking the other up. “C’mon sleepyheads, we’re here!” Jun yelled with excitement as he shook their shoulders. The pair slowly opened their eyes and pulled apart groggily before exiting the back seats. Jun let out a soft chuckle which shifted into a high pitched whine when the icy winter air smacked his face harshly as he opened the passenger side door. _Ugh, rude_ he thought. He truly hated winter. He couldn’t wait for spring’s warmth to grace them again. Minghao in the meantime, had already opened the trunk, taken the drinks out, and was on his way to the nice warm house so Jun quickly went to grab their duffle bags and jogged to catch up with him. One of the others could deal with the rest of it.

Thankfully, Jeonghan’s car had had the real food in it and they had already gotten started preparing dinner. After all, it took a while to make a feast that would feed thirteen hungry mouths. Everyone fell into various roles dicing, slicing, basting, table setting etc. and the process was only sped up as Seungcheol’s car arrived just a few minutes later. Jun was put in charge of preparing some souffle eggs and he settled contentedly into the task as he warmed up inside the cozy cabin. Eventually, the boys settled into a delicious dinner which had a wide array of dishes thanks to the many hands that had gone about preparing it. 

With their bellies full, they began slowly diving further and further into the drinks from Soonyoung’s red cooler. The rowdiness and mirth increased as they got drunker and drunker, hours passing by filled with their laughter caused by their silly shenanigans - a particularly memorable moment came during a round of truth-or-dare when Wonwoo had gotten dared to give Jihoon a strip tease by Seungkwan. Jun was left in complete shock when Wonwoo, usually one of the quietest and calmest of their group, actually went through with it. The look on Jihoon’s face was hilarious as he tried to escape his fate by hiding behind his larger boyfriend. Soonyoung, however, seemed completely content to let it all happen if his drunken laughter was anything to go by. Though he wasn’t absolutely positive, Jun thought there may have been more than a few pictures of the event taken by various members of their friend group. He didn’t dwell on it, surely he’d find out by checking the group chat in the morning - at the moment his phone was all the way over in the room he and Hao had decided to stay in, which was much too far away from the living room at the moment if you asked him. It all seemed to blur together in a jumble of happiness in his now thoroughly alcohol-soaked mind. The time completely seemed to fly by when all of a sudden Joshua excitedly called out, “Hey guys! It’s 11:58! It’s almost the New Year!” as he jumped up and down where he was standing, pointing at the tv playing some random broadcast of the countdown they'd found.

Jun drew Minghao in closer to him as midnight grew nearer, wrapping his arms around the slim waist as he tilted his head down slightly. Hao looked gorgeous as always, with the warm kitchen lighting casting a soft glow on the younger boy. His ears, adorned with some simple silver earrings, were pointed in a way Jun thought looked magical and elf-like. His eyes were dark and cat-like, always enticing him. His button nose was round and absolutely boopable. But the small private smile reserved only for Jun was what really caused his heart to do backflips in his chest as the boy reached up to wrap his arms around Junhui’s neck.

Suddenly he heard the countdown starting as their friends started yelling out.

“Ten!” started Jisoo.

“Nine!” more voices began to chorus.

“Eight!” Jun joined in, counting down with the rest of them.

“... Three! Two! One!” and with that Jun was leaning down to kiss Minghao to celebrate the new year. Those lips softly pillowed his own as they moved gently and chastley against each other. Jun brought a hand of his own up to card through Minghao’s inky black locks which he had styled in a mullet these days. His hair had gotten longer since they first met and now wisped around his neck, against his fuzzy brown sweater. Jun had honestly never been one for fashion but he had thought mullets were supposed to be one of those things people called ugly, but eh Minghao had always been on top of the trends and he honestly thought his boyfriend looked good with it. Slowly, Hao pulled away and they turned back to the party with the other couples in similar states. Apparently Chan had decided to kiss his soju bottle but that hadn’t lasted all that long so the youngest had started whining when he started to feel too left out. Although he wasn’t the only one in that situation, Jisoo was still too ecstatic about the simple countdown and Seokmin had come out to all of them as ace a few years ago and didn’t want to kiss anybody. 

“Awww Channie baby, come here,” Jeonghan had started saying as he stretched his arms out and made kissy faces for Chan even though he was still being held by Seungcheol. Everyone knew he had a soft spot for Chan anyways… and they were all reminded of it as Jeonghan broke out of the eldest’s grasp and chased after the youngest, long ponytail swinging out behind him as he called out, “Whose baby?” Chan was forced to admit “Jeonghan’s baby,” with a defeated sigh when the elder finally caught him and trapped him in his arms but not before cursing his admittedly shorter legs for betraying him, as the rest of the group watched on fondly. Jeonghan then placed a big kiss on Chan’s forehead with a messy wet smack causing the other to cry out “Ugh, no thanks!” in mock disgust before he finally escaped. He took a step back before continuing, “cheers, everyone!” in a toast. They all raised their glasses and clinked them together with a shared “jjang!” before downing their shots. 

They continued on like that for a few more hours as various people slowly made their way to bed. Jun and Minghao finally lay down in an exhausted heap sometime around 2 o'clock. Minghao changed into his white silk pyjamas his mum had gifted him the previous year meanwhile Jun had to be convinced to even remove his jeans. 

“Trust me, Ge ge - you don’t want to sleep in these, you’ll feel so much better if you take these off. Just sleep in your underwear” Minghao chided fondly in Mandarin, slipping into their mother tongue now that it was just the two of them. Junhui groaned in complaint but complied as he shucked the pants off onto the floor. He felt the bed dip as Minghao sat down beside him, silently helping Jun remove the grey blue sweater as well, before they moved under the covers. Jun cocooned himself around Minghao’s smaller body nuzzling into the soft hair breathing in the gentle camellia scent and letting out a soft contented sigh as the younger snuggled into the embrace. It was nice for now and Jun let himself enjoy it for now before Minghao would inevitably change their position while he shifted around in his sleep. Jun closed his eyes and in that comfortable warmth, let the darkness overcome him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! And a special thank you to those of you who encouraged me to write this (you know who you are ^^). This is simultaneously my first JunHao and Seventeen fic and I've been really excited but also really nervous to post it. Sorry if there was anything weird grammar-wise but I was having some trouble actually writing this down and I finally just forced myself to sit down and get this chapter out in a few hours. I would really appreciate feedback in your comments but please be gentle.


	2. i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies! I'm so sorry it's taken me over a month to update this but I'm back with an update just in time for our special day. Happy 8th of June. Hope y'all enjoy ~

Jun woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. 

He had been startled awake by some sort of nightmare. Unable to quite recall the events of the dream when he tried to think about it, he was left only with the lingering unpleasant feelings sitting in his gut and shivers running down his spine. Realizing he was safe in the cabin that his friends had rented for New Year’s, he shut his eyes again and turned around to seek comfort in the warm arms of his boyfriend however he just ended up rolling over onto a cool, empty spot on the mattress. Blindly he stretched an arm out, patting around some more to see if he could find the other Chinese man but sighed and opened his eyes again when he found he had no such luck. 

The small room was quite dark, cast only in a very dim blue light filtering in through the window as they had forgotten to shut the thin white curtains in their tired state before they had gone to bed. The relative darkness meant that it was still must’ve been quite early, maybe 4 or 5 am by Jun’s reckoning, and definitely too early for Minghao to have actually gotten up for the day.

The thing was that Minghao had a tendency to sleepwalk and Jun really should’ve seen it coming as any changes to his daily routine tended to set the younger man off. 

He lay still in the darkness of the bedroom for another minute just in case the younger man had simply popped off to the washroom, however his hopes proved futile and he reluctantly got up with a stretch and a groan once he realized his lover didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Picking up the clothes that lay pooled on the floor beside the bed from where Minghao had tossed them earlier, Jun swiped at his eyes as he tried to rub the sleep out of them. He put the jeans and sweater on quickly and stood up, now realizing that the door lay slightly ajar as his senses were starting to come back to him. He took a moment to let the in-floor heating lying underneath the smooth hardwood warm him up a little before walking towards the bedroom door and slipping it open a little more, inwardly sighing with relief when it came open easily without a sound, not wanting to disturb the others’ sleep.

Upon exiting the bedroom he stepped out onto the second floor hallway and peered out into the darkness but he couldn’t seem to find any Minghao shaped shadows in the void as his eyes continued to adjust. He decided to check the washroom, which lay just to the left, first as at least he wouldn’t bother any of their sleeping friends that way. He was hoping he’d find his boyfriend curled up asleep in the tub like that one time last summer - bathtubs weren’t common in Korea but they’d somehow managed to luck out with one in their apartment, a task Jun still didn’t know how they accomplished considering their relatively small budget. That luck, however, hadn’t carried over to the present moment. Switching on the light and blinking a few times at harsh illumination, he quickly realized that there was a distinct lack of Minghao upon doing a quick scan of the room - there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide in the small space of the typical wet room washroom. Unfortunately there was no Hao sat on the white porcelain toilet seat, no tub for him to sleep in, the mirror reflected only his own image, and the pristine silver shower head seemed to offer no answers either. 

He went back out in the hallway and once again took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low-light whilst pondering where to look next. He was debating between checking out some of the bedrooms in case the younger man had stumbled into someone else’s room and they’d just taken the Chinese boy in, knowing of his sleepwalking tendencies, or checking some of the communal areas downstairs first. 

Eventually he re-adjusted and decided to check downstairs next as he didn’t want to wake anyone else unnecessarily. Grabbing hold of the white wooden banister, he descended the staircase quickly, gliding down the steps until he arrived at the landing.

The living room lay at the bottom of the stairs and presented a new challenge for Junhui as there were many more obstacles lying scattered throughout the room in the darkness, both as a result of their earlier shenanigans and the fact that it was naturally more furnished than something like a bathroom. The messy room was filled with discarded clothes, empty bottles, crumbs and the like. Hao could easily have settled down anywhere in the room and so it warranted a more thorough investigation. Moving alongside the wall, Jun splayed his hand out on the wallpapered surface as he patted it in search of the lightswitch. Eventually he was successful in this endeavour but unfortunately not before tripping over someone’s discarded backpack and smacking his funny bone on something as he stumbled. He winced and cradled his left arm for a moment but was distracted from the pain when he managed to find the switch only a few seconds after the incident.

The offending couch (turns out that even though most of it was obviously soft, he’d managed to hit himself on the hard backboard) was the cleanest of the three and obviously held no sign of the younger man. The next couch to the right was stacked high with various jackets and Jun thought that perhaps Hao might’ve used them as blankets to burrow under. He took the time to pull all thirteen of them off but found that that sofa was unfortunately empty as well when he was faced with the sight of the beige fabric cushion. He also took a quick peek underneath the coffee table that lay across from it when, unbidden, he randomly recalled the baby photo Hao’s mum had shown him of the other curled up under a table with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie slightly crushed in his tiny hand and a dirty mouth covered in crumbs. 

Apparently his sleepwalking problem had started young and this was one of the first instances where it had happened and as such his family hadn’t been used to handling it yet. As the story goes, Mrs. Xu had told him that a toddler aged-Minghao had gotten up from his nap, hungry, whilst his mum had been doing some work in their home office and instead of announcing the problem to his mother, he had decided to be a naughty little child and simply chose to help himself to a little snack. And what better than some cookies? However, it seemed that the sleep hadn’t fully shaken itself from the little boy’s system and he had fallen back to sleep midway through munching on the sweet treat. Unbeknownst to him, he started to sleepwalk and his little legs had unilaterally decided to carry him underneath the kitchen table to resume the afternoon nap. Unfortunately Hao’s mum hadn’t been given the memo and was left in a panic when she discovered her beloved son wasn’t in his cot. She had freaked out, searching high and low for him until she eventually found him lying on the cool tiles under the table and had snapped that iconic photo. Ironically mirroring the situation Jun was currently faced with 20-or-so years laters.

He recalled laughing about it when he’d heard the story and was briefly wrapped up in the warmth of those memories until he was snapped back into the present by stubbing his toe rather painfully straight on the corner edge of the third couch. “Shit!” he hissed quietly (or so he hoped) as the sudden throbbing in his big toe caused him to bend over in pain. Taking a deep breath, he continued onto said third couch. Unlike in Goldilocks, the third time wasn’t the charm, and after searching in, on, and around that sofa he was still aggravatingly Hao-less. He was nowhere else to be found amongst the other messes in the room and Jun decided it was time to move onto the next location.

Walking over to the kitchen and sliding the door open, he realized that there was possibly an even bigger mess in this room. The light from the living room pooled in enough that he didn’t have to bother looking around for the switch this time, and instead was able to immediately resume his early morning search for Xu Minghao. The soft warm glow of light cast into the room reflected off the blue tile backsplash as he walked around the large refrigerator that jutted out, in case his boyfriend was hidden around the other side in the blind spot. None of the cupboards appeared to have been left open and Jun quickly decided against searching them. Regardless of how teeny, flexible, and cat-like Hao was in looks and behaviour, he was still a full-grown human man at the end of the day and realistically probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze into the tiny little spaces, especially whilst asleep. Striding across the space, he moved the second door open leading from the cooking area out to the dining room.

His first thought had initially been to search around the long dining table but he immediately changed his mind when he was struck by an icy blast. Shocked, he threw his head up and, to his horror, noticed that the source of the cold breeze was the front door which was ajar.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh shit, Hao Hao, no, no, no! You can’t be outside!” Junhui cursed as he dashed to the front door. He nearly knocked over an indoor hanging plant out of it’s pot in his haste but he paid it no mind aside from swiping the vine’s vibrant green leaves out of his face. He was in such a rush that he nearly fell over a few times after losing his balance when hopping from foot-to-foot, trying to get his converse on in a hurry. The cold wind carried a few snowflakes inside, chilling Jun’s fingers and made in numbing them, made him fumble as he raced to do up the laces. After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple seconds, Junhui was finally finished and instead of wasting more time going back to get his long padding jacket, he simply grabbed the nearest thing which happened to be a white denim jacket resting on the coat rack before running out the door.

Once outside, he was greeted by a snowstorm raging in the freezing night as snow flew across the sky in the howling winds. He hadn’t noticed this earlier and figured what must’ve started off as a few flakes had been turning into a full-blown storm in the time he had spent searching. Cursing his past-self for all that time wasted searching inside, Jun wanted to smack his idiotic-self. His poor angel was outside somewhere in this mess and probably freezing, while Jun had been inside, nice and comfortable in the heated cabin. Having fucked himself by turning on the lights inside, he strained to see outside with the combination of darkness and snow. He moved down the porch steps, calling out Hao’s name uselessly against the wind, hoping his boyfriend hadn’t wandered out too far. Jogging up the path, he swivelled his head back-and-forth trying to search every square inch of the driveway lest he miss out on anything important. Heart racing, adrenaline pumped through his body fueling a fire inside of him as he desperately carried out his task. Until suddenly he froze, blood in his veins running cold as ice. _Foot prints._

He suddenly noticed footprints on the pathway that he’d somehow missed before. They were leading off the property and directly onto the main road. Picking up the pace, he raced as fast as he could to follow the trail, fighting against the blizzard as he struggled up the sloped driveway and onto the road.

His panting breaths formed misty white clouds in front of him as he struggled to see which way the footprints were leading. With every passing second, the gusts of snow were making it harder and harder to see and the bile in his throat rose higher and higher as the fear increased. Working hard, however, he was able to get a glimpse at what he thought were Hao’s footprints and took off running in that direction.

Eventually he began to slow as his body was tiring from the hard work he was putting it through but he refused to give up. 

Sometime later (to be honest he wasn't sure if had been minutes or hours at this point), however, he was rewarded for his hard work as he moved further down the road. The street ran through the forest and at a particularly densely wooded section of fir trees, the flurries were stymied enough that Jun was able to regain a clear view of the footprint trail. This glimmer of hope was enough to give him a renewed vigour as he burst forward again.

Follow the footprints. Where is he? Is he ok? Follow the footprints. How did he get so far? Is he warm enough? Follow the footprints. Ugh, I still don't fucking see him. What the hell? Seriously, WHERE ARE YOU?! I love you- I love you so much, you asshole. Follow the footprints...

It all began to turn into a confusing mixture of snow, and darkness, and cold as Jun ran on and on. Eventually his feelings of fear and worry all began to tangle into each other. Everything started to blur together in one big jumble of terror taking over him.

He only had one solid thing left he could hold on to. One more thought. Like a mantra reverberating in his consciousness:

_Where is Xu Minghao?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, just want to say sorry that it's taken this long to update. Definitely didn't anticipate that. As y'all know the world's been pretty shitty lately and I got hit with some personal stuff like work being crazy and having to have a tumour removed (I'm ok!). Anyways thank you to everyone whose been patient and encouraging whilst I was going through my writer's block. 
> 
> The next few chapters should be up much more quickly at least. I got a burst of writing energy tonight and wrote most of this chapter in the last few hours so I hope it's ok and there's not too many grammar errors and things. I may go back and fix it up a bit later but I really wanted to get this out. I'm especially happy to have something out for the 8th of June (well it is in my timezone at least, I think it's still the 7th in lot's of places haha).
> 
> Finally, if you liked this or have like any thoughts on it at all please drop a kudos or comment, I'd really appreciate it!!


	3. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Told you this chapter would be up sooner than the last one was! I'm trying something a little experimental with this fic which should be pretty obvious upon reading this chapter, I hope y'all don't mind and will stick around anyways.

Jun woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. 

He had been startled awake by some sort of nightmare. Unable to quite recall the events of the dream when he tried to think about it, he was left only with the lingering unpleasant feelings sitting in his gut and shivers running down his spine. Realizing he was safe in the cabin that his friends had rented for New Year’s, he shut his eyes again and turned around to seek comfort in the warm arms of his boyfriend however he just ended up rolling over onto a cool, empty spot on the mattress. Blindly he stretched an arm out, patting around some more to see if he could find the other Chinese man but sighed and opened his eyes again when he found he had no such luck. 

The small room was quite dark, cast only in a dim blue light filtering in through the window as they had forgotten to shut the thin off-white curtains in their tired state before they had gone to bed. The relative darkness meant that it was still must’ve been quite early, maybe 4 or 5 am by Jun’s reckoning, and definitely too early for Minghao to have actually gotten up for the day.

The thing was that Minghao had a tendency to sleepwalk and Jun really should’ve seen it coming as any changes to his daily routine tended to set the younger man off. 

He lay still in the darkness of the bedroom for another minute just in case the younger man had simply popped off to the washroom, however his hopes proved futile and he reluctantly got up with a stretch and a groan once he realized his lover didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Picking up the clothes that lay pooled on the floor beside the bed from where Minghao had tossed them earlier, Jun swiped at his eyes as he tried to rub the sleep out of them. He put the jeans and sweater on quickly and stood up, now realizing that the door lay slightly ajar as his senses were starting to come back to him. He stepped out onto the cool hardwood floor and took a moment to let his headrush settle a bit and wake up a little before walking towards the bedroom door and slipping it open a tad more, inwardly sighing with relief when it came open easily with only a small hushed squeak, not enough of a sound to disturb the others’ sleep.

Upon exiting the bedroom he stepped out onto the second floor hallway and peered out into the dimly lit space but he couldn’t seem to find any Minghao shaped shadows in the void as his eyes adjusted a little. He decided to check the washroom, which lay just to the left, first as at least he wouldn’t bother any of their sleeping friends that way. HE hoped he’d find his boyfriend curled up asleep in the tub like that one time last summer - bathtubs weren’t common in Korea but they’d somehow managed to luck out with one in their apartment, a task Jun still didn’t know how they accomplished considering their relatively small budget. That luck, however, hadn’t carried over to the present moment. Switching on the light and blinking a few times at the illumination of the buzzing, flickering bulb, he quickly realized that there was a distinct lack of Minghao upon doing a quick scan of the room - there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide in the small space of the typical wet room washroom. Unfortunately there was no Hao sat on the ivory porcelain toilet seat, no tub for him to sleep in, the mirror reflected only his own image through the dust that had collected, and the dull silver-grey shower head seemed to offer no answers either. 

He went back out in the hallway and once again took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lower-light, whilst pondering where to look next. He was debating between checking out some of the bedrooms in case the younger man had stumbled into someone else’s room and they’d just taken the Chinese boy in, knowing of his sleepwalking tendencies, or checking some of the communal areas downstairs first. 

Eventually he re-adjusted and decided to check downstairs next as he didn’t want to wake anyone else unnecessarily. Grimacing slightly as he grabbed hold of the wooden banister, it’s texture was rough and uneven under his hand as the white paint coating was peeling off in thin strips, he descended the staircase quickly, gliding down the steps until he arrived at the landing.

The living room lay at the bottom of the stairs and presented a new challenge for Junhui as there were many more obstacles lying scattered throughout the room in the relative darkness, both as a result of their earlier shenanigans and the fact that it was naturally more furnished than something like a bathroom. The messy room was filled with discarded clothes, empty bottles, crumbs and the like. Hao could easily have settled down anywhere in the room and so it warranted a more thorough investigation. Moving alongside the wall, Jun splayed his hand out on the wallpapered surface, which much like the bannister seemed to be going into a state of disrepair going by the uneven and flaky texture, as he patted it in search of the lightswitch. Eventually he was successful in this endeavour but unfortunately not before tripping over someone’s discarded backpack and smacking his funny bone on something as he stumbled. He winced and cradled his left arm for a moment but was distracted from the pain when he managed to find the switch only a few seconds after the incident.

The offending couch (turns out that even though most of it was obviously soft, he’d managed to hit himself on the hard backboard) was the cleanest of the three and obviously held no sign of the younger man. The next couch to the right was stacked high with various jackets and Jun thought that perhaps Hao might’ve used them as blankets to burrow under. He took the time to pull all thirteen of them off, but found that that sofa was unfortunately empty as well when he was faced with the sight of the faded beige fabric cushion. He also took a quick peek underneath the old coffee table that lay across from it when, unbidden, he randomly recalled the baby photo Hao’s mum had shown him of the other curled up under a table with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie slightly crushed in his tiny hand and a dirty mouth covered in crumbs. 

Apparently his sleepwalking problem had started young and this was one of the first instances where it had happened and as such his family hadn’t been used to handling it yet. As the story goes, Mrs. Xu had told him that a toddler aged-Minghao had gotten up from his nap, hungry, whilst his mum had been doing some work in their home office and instead of announcing the problem to his mother, he had decided to be a naughty little child and simply chose to help himself to a little snack. And what better than some cookies? However, it seemed that the sleep hadn’t fully shaken itself from the little boy’s system and he had fallen back to sleep midway through munching on the sweet treat. Unbeknownst to him he started sleepwalking and his little legs had unilaterally decided to carry him underneath the kitchen table to resume the afternoon nap. Unfortunately Hao’s mum hadn’t been given the memo and was left in a panic when she discovered her beloved son wasn’t in his cot. She had freaked out, searching high and low for him until she eventually found him lying on the cool tiles under the table and had snapped that iconic photo. Ironically mirroring the situation Jun was currently faced with 20-or-so years laters.

He recalled laughing about it when he’d heard the story and was briefly wrapped up in the warmth of those memories until he was snapped back into the present by stubbing his toe rather painfully straight on the corner edge of the third couch. “Shit!” he hissed quietly (or so he hoped) as the sudden throbbing in his big toe caused him to bend over in pain. Taking a deep breath, he continued onto the third couch. Unlike in Goldilocks, the third time wasn’t the charm, and after searching in, on, and around that sofa he was still aggravatingly Hao-less. He was nowhere else to be found amongst the other messes in the room and Jun decided it was time to move onto the next location.

Walking over to the kitchen and sliding the door open, he realized that there was possibly an even bigger mess in this room. The light from the living room that had pooled in was quite dim but in combination with the dawn’s dim hues from the windows, it was just enough that he didn’t have to bother looking around for the switch this time and instead was able to immediately resume his early morning search for Xu Minghao. The soft warm glow of light cast into the room reflected slightly off the cracked, grey-blue tile backsplash as he walked around the large refrigerator that jutted out, in case his boyfriend was hidden around the other side in the blind spot. None of the aging cupboards appeared to have been left open and Jun quickly decided against searching them. Regardless of how teeny, flexible, and cat-like Hao was in looks and behaviour, he was still a full-grown human man at the end of the day and realistically probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze into the tiny little spaces, especially whilst asleep. Striding across the space, he moved the second door open leading from the cooking area out to the dining room.

His first thought had initially been to search around the long table but he immediately changed his mind when he was struck by a cool gust of wind. Shocked, he threw his head up and ,to his horror, noticed that the source of the chilly breeze was the front door which was ajar.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh shit, Hao Hao, no, no, no! You can’t be outside!” Junhui cursed as he dashed to the front door. He nearly knocked over an indoor hanging plant out of it’s pot in his haste but he paid it no mind aside from swiping the vine’s sad wilted leaves out of his face. He was in such a rush that he nearly fell over a few times after losing his balance when hopping from foot-to-foot, trying to get his converse on in a hurry. The brisk wind chilled Jun’s fingers as he fumblingly raced to do up the laces. After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple seconds, Junhui was finally finished and instead of wasting more time going back to get his proper jacket, he simply grabbed the nearest thing which happened to be a white denim jacket resting on the coat rack before running out the door.

Once outside, he was greeted by the grip of gross, dark slush quickly soaking through his running shoes and the bottoms of his jeans. He hadn’t noticed this earlier and figured that the season’s rising temperatures must’ve melted the snow a lot since he’d last been outside. Cursing his past-self for all that time wasted searching inside, Jun wanted to smack his idiotic-self. His poor angel was outside somewhere in this mess and probably quite cold - remember that skinny frame does nothing to help keep his poor Hao Hao warm - while Jun had been inside, nice and comfortable in the cabin. He strained to see outside in the dim light. Jun moved down the porch steps, calling out Hao’s name uselessly against the wind, hoping his boyfriend hadn’t wandered out too far. Jogging up the path, he swivelled his head back-and-forth trying to search every square inch of the driveway lest he miss out on anything important. Heart racing, adrenaline pumped through his body fuelling a fire inside of him as he desperately carried out his task. Until suddenly he froze, blood in his veins running cold as ice. _Foot prints._

He suddenly noticed footprints on the pathway that he’d somehow missed before. They were leading off the property and directly onto the main road. Picking up the pace, he raced as fast as he could to follow the trail, fighting against the sloggy terrain as he struggled up the sloped driveway and onto the road.

His panting breaths were loud in his own ears as he struggled to see which way the footprints were leading. With every passing second the changing weather seemed to deform the tracks and the melting snow in general, making it harder and harder to follow and the bile in his throat rose higher and higher as the fear increased. Working hard, however, he was able to get a glimpse at what he thought were Hao’s footprints and took off running in that direction.

Eventually he began to slow as his body was tiring from the hard work he was putting it through but he refused to give up. 

Sometime later (to be honest he wasn't sure if it had been minutes or hours at this point), however, he was rewarded for his hard work as he moved further down the road. The street ran through the forest and at a particularly densely wooded section of fir trees, the warmth and sunlight were stymied enough throughout the season that Jun was able to regain a clear view of the footprint trail where this section remained as pristine snow rather than slush. This glimmer of hope was enough to give him a renewed vigour as he burst forward again.

Follow the footprints. Where is he? Is he ok? Follow the footprints. How did he get so far? Is he warm enough? Follow the footprints. Ugh, I still don't fucking see him. What the hell? Seriously, WHERE ARE YOU?! I love you- I love you so much, you asshole. Follow the footprints...

It all began to turn into a confusing mixture of slush, and darkness, and chill as Jun ran on and on. Eventually his feelings of fear and worry all began to tangle into each other. Everything started to blur together in one big jumble of terror taking over him.

He only had one solid thing left he could hold on to. One more thought. Like a mantra reverberating in his consciousness:

_Where is Xu Minghao?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still here, hi! What did you think? Do you get what's going on? Any theories? Please, please, please leave a comment if you can <3


	4. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter is here! The next one should be up pretty shortly as well.
> 
> Just a reminder that I'm trying a kinda experimental style with this fic. I hope you'll have fun being little detectives and finding the differences but if that's not your cup of tea please wait until chapter 6 and read on from there.
> 
> I hope you enjoy if you choose to read this chapter ^^

Jun woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. 

He had been startled awake by some sort of nightmare. Unable to quite recall the events of the dream when he tried to think about it, he was left only with the lingering unpleasant feelings sitting in his gut and shivers running down his spine. Realizing he was safe in the cabin that his friends had rented for New Year’s, he shut his eyes again and turned around to seek comfort in the warm arms of his boyfriend however he just ended up rolling over onto a cool, empty spot on the mattress. Blindly he stretched an arm out, patting around some more to see if he could find the other Chinese man but sighed and opened his eyes again when he found he had no such luck. 

The small room was quite dark, cast only in a dim golden light filtering in through the window as they had forgotten to shut the ratty grey curtains in their tired state before they had gone to bed. The relative darkness meant that it was still must’ve been quite early, maybe 4 or 5 am by Jun’s reckoning, and definitely too early for Minghao to have actually gotten up for the day.

The thing was that Minghao had a tendency to sleepwalk and Jun really should’ve seen it coming as any changes to his daily routine tended to set the younger man off. 

He lay still in the darkness of the bedroom for another minute just in case the younger man had simply popped off to the washroom, however his hopes proved futile and he reluctantly got up with a stretch and a groan once he realized his lover didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Picking up the clothes that lay pooled on the floor beside the bed from where Minghao had tossed them earlier, Jun swiped at his eyes as he tried to rub the sleep out of them. He put the jeans and sweater on quickly and stood up, now realizing that the door lay slightly ajar as his senses were starting to come back to him. He stepped out onto the dark, grungey hardwood floor that he really hoped he wouldn’t get a splinter from - he’d count his blessing if he only ended with dirty soles - and took a moment to let his headrush settle a bit and wake up a little before walking towards the bedroom door and slipping it open a tad more, he groaned inwardly when it let out a huge, whining creak (jeez those hinges really needed to be oiled up), praying that somehow it wasn’t enough of a sound to disturb the others’ sleep.

Upon exiting the bedroom he stepped out onto the second floor hallway and peered out into the dim space but he couldn’t seem to find any Minghao shaped shadows there. He decided to check the washroom, which lay just to the left, first as at least he wouldn’t bother any of their sleeping friends that way, hoping he’d find his boyfriend curled up asleep in the tub like that one time last summer - bathtubs weren’t common in Korea but they’d somehow managed to luck out with one in their apartment, a task Jun still didn’t know how they accomplished considering their relatively small budget. That luck, however, hadn’t carried over to the present moment. He sighed as the light didn’t seem to want to come on - it must’ve burnt out at some point but the lazy owner of the cottage hadn’t bothered to replace it apparently. Fortunately for Jun, there was just enough of the dawn’s early light streaming in through the tiny window in the corner to allow him to see the room. He quickly realized that there was a distinct lack of Minghao upon doing a quick scan of the room though - there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide in the small space of the typical wet room washroom. Unfortunately there was no Hao sat on the stained grey toilet seat, no tub for him to sleep in, the mirror barely reflected his own image back at him through the heavy dust that had collected, and the dirty, tarnished shower head seemed to offer no answers either. Did the owner have no conscience? How could he rent out such a hovel?

He went back out in the hallway and once again and whilst pondered where to look next. He was debating between checking out some of the bedrooms in case the younger man had stumbled into someone else’s room and they’d just taken the Chinese boy in, knowing of his sleepwalking tendencies, or checking some of the communal areas downstairs first. 

Eventually he decided to check downstairs next as he didn’t want to wake anyone else unnecessarily. Grimacing as he grabbed hold of loose and rickety wooden banister, it’s texture was extremely rough and uneven under his hand as the white paint that had once coated it’s surface had peeled off so much that now it was getting near impossible to know it had even been there in the first place. He descended the staircase at a jog, his stomping down the steps slowed by the slight unevenness of the stairwell, until he arrived at the landing.

The living room lay at the bottom of the stairs and presented a new challenge for Junhui as there were many more obstacles lying scattered throughout the poorly lit room, both as a result of their earlier shenanigans and the fact that it was naturally more furnished than something like a bathroom. The messy room was filled with discarded clothes, empty bottles, crumbs and the like. Hao could easily have settled down anywhere in the room and so it warranted a more thorough investigation. Moving alongside the wall, Jun splayed his hand out on the wallpapered surface, which much like the bannister seemed to have long been in a state of disrepair going by the way the print was so faded and dull that it’s pattern was barely discernible and seemed be losing the battle between sticking to the wall and crawling down to the floor, as he patted it in search of the lightswitch. Eventually he was successful in finding the switch but this endeavour was pointless as it, too, didn’t turn on and unfortunately Jun ended up tripping over someone’s discarded backpack and smacking his funny bone on something as he stumbled. He winced and cradled his left arm for a moment but was distracted from the pain when he managed to find the switch only a few seconds after the incident.

The offending couch (turns out that even though most of it was obviously soft, he’d managed to hit himself on the hard backboard) was the cleanest of the three and obviously held no sign of the younger man. The next couch to the right was stacked high with various jackets and Jun thought that perhaps Hao might’ve used them as blankets to burrow under. He took the time to pull all thirteen of them off, he found that that sofa was unfortunately empty as well when he was faced with the sight of the unraveling beige fabric cushion. He also took a quick peek underneath the wretched old coffee table that lay across from it when, unbidden, he randomly recalled the baby photo Hao’s mum had shown him of the other curled up under a table with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie slightly crushed in his tiny hand and a dirty mouth covered in crumbs. 

Apparently his sleepwalking problem had started young and this was one of the first instances where it had happened and as such his family hadn’t been used to handling it yet. As the story goes, Mrs. Xu had told him that a toddler aged-Minghao had gotten up from his nap, hungry, whilst his mum had been doing some work in their home office and instead of announcing the problem to his mother, he had decided to be a naughty little child and simply chose to help himself to a little snack. And what better than some cookies? However, it seemed that the sleep hadn’t fully shaken itself from the little boy’s system and he had fallen back to sleep midway through munching on the sweet treat. Unbeknownst to him he started sleepwalking and his little legs had unilaterally decided to carry him underneath the kitchen table to resume the afternoon nap. Unfortunately Hao’s mum hadn’t been given the memo and was left in a panic when she discovered her beloved son wasn’t in his cot. She had freaked out, searching high and low for him until she eventually found him lying on the cool tiles under the table and had snapped that iconic photo. Ironically mirroring the situation Jun was currently faced with 20-or-so years laters.

He recalled laughing about it when he’d heard the story and was briefly wrapped up in the warmth of those memories until he was snapped back into the present by stubbing his toe rather painfully straight on the corner edge of the third couch. “Shit!” he hissed quietly (or so he hoped) as the sudden throbbing in his big toe caused him to bend over in pain. Taking a deep breath, he continued onto said third couch. Unlike in Goldilocks, the third time wasn’t the charm, and after searching in, on, and around that sofa he was still aggravatingly Hao-less. He was nowhere else to be found amongst the other messes in the room and Jun decided it was time to move onto the next location.

Walking over to the kitchen and sliding the door open, he realized that there was possibly an even bigger mess in this room. Even though they were dirty, the dawn’s dim hues from the windows were just enough that he didn’t bother looking for the switch this time around, and instead was able to immediately resume his early morning search for Xu Minghao. The soft warm glow of light cast into the room reflected slightly off the crumbling bluish-grey tile backsplash as he walked around the large refrigerator that jutted out, in case his boyfriend was hidden around the other side in the blind spot. None of the aged, sagging cupboards appeared to have been left open and Jun quickly decided against searching them. Regardless of how teeny, flexible, and cat-like Hao was in looks and behaviour, he was still a full-grown human man at the end of the day and realistically probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze into the tiny little spaces, especially whilst asleep. Striding across the space, he moved the second door open leading from the cooking area out to the dining room.

His first thought had initially been to search around the long table but he immediately changed his mind when he was struck by a hot gust of wind. Shocked, he threw his head up and, to his horror, noticed that the source of the warmth was the front door which was ajar.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh shit, Hao Hao, no, no, no! You can’t be outside!” Junhui cursed as he dashed to the front door. He nearly knocked over an indoor hanging plant out of its pot in his haste but he paid it no mind aside from swiping the vine’s dead brown leaves out of his face. He was in such a rush that he nearly fell over a few times after losing his balance when hopping from foot-to-foot, trying to get his converse on in a hurry. The wind carried in some raindrops that wet Jun’s fingers and caused them to slip and he fumble as he raced to do up the laces. After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple seconds, Junhui was finally finished and instead of wasting more time going back to get his proper coat to protect him from the rain, he simply grabbed the nearest thing which happened to be a white denim jacket resting on the coat rack before running out the door.

Once outside, he was greeted by torrential rain that immediately drenched him from head-to-toe. He hadn’t noticed this earlier and figured that the gentle sun-shower had quickly escalated into a full blown storm in the time he'd spent looking. Cursing his past-self for all that time wasted searching inside, Jun wanted to smack his idiotic-self. His poor angel was outside somewhere in this mess and probably soaked through while Jun had been inside, and decently comfortable in the cabin. He strained to see outside as he was nearly blinded by the amount of water falling into his eyes. Brushing his now stringy bangs out of eyes, Jun tried to clear his vision at least a little as he moved down the porch steps, calling out Hao’s name uselessly against the wind _and oh great_ now some thunder too, hoping his boyfriend hadn’t wandered out too far. Jogging up the path, he swivelled his head back-and-forth trying to search every square inch of the driveway lest he miss out on anything important. Heart racing, adrenaline pumped through his body fueling a fire inside of him as he desperately carried out his task. Until suddenly he froze, blood in his veins running cold as ice despite the muggy heat. _Foot prints._

He suddenly noticed footprints on a muddy patch of the pathway that he’d somehow missed before. They were leading off the property and directly onto the main road. Picking up the pace, he raced as fast as he could to follow the trail, fighting against the slippery terrain as he struggled up the sloped driveway and onto the road.

His panting breaths were loud in his own ears as he struggled to see which way the footprints were leading. With every passing second the raging storm seemed to be washing away everything in its wake and replacing them with puddles the size of lakes, making it harder and harder to follow Minghao’s trail and the bile in his throat rose higher and higher as the fear increased. Working hard, however, under a streak of lightning, he was able to get a glimpse at what he thought were Hao’s footprints somewhat further in the distance and took off running in that direction.

Eventually he began to slow as his body was tiring from the hard work he was putting it through in the humid weather but he refused to give up. 

Sometime later (to be honest he wasn't sure if it had been minutes or hours at this point), however, he was rewarded for his hard work as he moved further down the road. The street ran through the forest and at a particularly densely wooded section of fir trees, the typhoon was stymied enough that Jun was able to gain a clear view of the footprint trail where this section remained as mud. This glimmer of hope was enough to give him a renewed vigour as he burst forward again.

Follow the footprints. Where is he? Is he ok? Follow the footprints. How did he get so far? Is he warm enough? Follow the footprints. Ugh, I still don't fucking see him. What the hell? Seriously, WHERE ARE YOU?! I love you- I love you so much, you asshole. How on earth did this storm not wake you up?! Follow the footprints...

It all began to turn into a confusing mixture of blinding rain, and cloudy darkness, and deafening thunder as Jun ran on and on. Eventually his feelings of fear and worry all began to tangle into each other. Everything started to blur together in one big jumble of terror taking over him.

He only had one solid thing left he could hold on to. One more thought. Like a mantra reverberating in his consciousness:

_Where is Xu Minghao?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to give anything away but I'm getting excited about this again - any theories/ideas? Thank you to anyone who has given kudos and especially to those who've commented. Your interactions make me so, so happy as an author.


	5. iv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy comeback!! I wanted to celebrate the new album by sharing a new chapter with you guys ^^

Jun woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. 

He had been startled awake by some sort of nightmare. Unable to quite recall the events of the dream when he tried to think about it, he was left only with the lingering unpleasant feelings sitting in his gut and shivers running down his spine. Realizing he was safe in the cabin that his friends had rented for New Year’s, he shut his eyes again and turned around to seek comfort in the warm arms of his boyfriend however he just ended up rolling over onto a cool, empty spot on the mattress. Blindly he stretched an arm out, patting around some more to see if he could find the other Chinese man but sighed and opened his eyes again when he found he had no such luck.

The small room was quite dark, cast only in a gloomy grey-blue filtering in through the window as the tattered rags of fabric that hung limply against the wall could barely even be called curtains and weren’t in anyway functional. The relative darkness meant that it was still must’ve been quite early, maybe 4 or 5 am by Jun’s reckoning, and definitely too early for Minghao to have actually gotten up for the day.

The thing was that Minghao had a tendency to sleepwalk and Jun really should’ve seen it coming as any changes to his daily routine tended to set the younger man off.

He lay still in the darkness of the bedroom for another minute just in case the younger man had simply popped off to the washroom, however his hopes proved futile and he reluctantly got up with a stretch and a groan once he realized his lover didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Picking up the clothes that lay pooled on the floor beside the bed from where Minghao had tossed them earlier, Jun swiped at his eyes as he tried to rub the sleep out of them. He put the jeans and sweater on quickly and stood up, now realizing that the door lay slightly ajar as his senses were starting to come back to him. He stepped out onto the cool, dirty floor and tried not to trip over any of the spots where holes peppered the rotting wood. He prayed that he wouldn’t get any splinters or creepy critters crawling across his poor little feet, the best he could hope for were simply some dirty soles. He took a moment to let his headrush settle a bit and wake up a little before walking towards the bedroom door and slipping it open a tad more, he grunted as he actually had to give it quite a shove in order to move it and it seemed to wanted to stay quite stuck in place, seconded by the fact that it let out a huge, whining groan (jeez those hinges really needed to be oiled up). Jun was completely incredulous at the fact that by some miracle it hadn’t seemed to disturb the others’ sleep. The alcohol must’ve put them out more deeply than usual.

Upon exiting the bedroom he stepped out onto the second floor hallway and peered out into the dark space but he couldn’t seem to find any Minghao shaped shadows in the space. He decided to check the washroom, which lay just to the left, first as at least he wouldn’t bother any of their sleeping friends that way, hoping he’d find his boyfriend curled up asleep in the tub like that one time last summer - bathtubs weren’t common in Korea but they’d somehow managed to luck out with one in their apartment, a task Jun still didn’t know how they accomplished considering their relatively small budget. That luck, however, hadn’t carried over to the present moment. He sighed as the light didn’t seem to want to come on. He tried flicking it back and forth a couple times as it was really quite dark in there, but it must’ve burnt out at some point as the lazy owner of the cottage hadn’t bothered to replace it apparently. Jun, had to settle for squinting in the dim light provided by the tiny window in the corner to allow him to see the bathroom. He eventually realized that there was a distinct lack of Minghao upon doing a scan of the room though - there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide in the small space of the typical wet room washroom but it was kinda difficult to see in there. Unfortunately there was no Hao sat on the gross, soiled and stained grey toilet seat; no tub for him to sleep in; the mirror barely reflected his own image back at him through the heavy dust, creeping cobwebs, and cracks that had collected; and the wrecked, rusted shower head seemed to offer no answers either. Did the owner have no conscience? How could he rent out such a hovel? Why had they decided to stay at such a place. Surely there were better pensions out there that they could’ve stayed at... 

He went back out in the hallway and once again and pondered where to look next. He was debating between checking out some of the bedrooms in case the younger man had stumbled into someone else’s room and they’d just taken the Chinese boy in, knowing of his sleepwalking tendencies, or checking some of the communal areas downstairs first.

Eventually Junhui decided to check downstairs next as he didn’t want to wake anyone else unnecessarily. Grimacing as he grabbed hold of loose and rickety wooden banister, it was in such bad shape that some of the pillars had completely fallen off and more still were left hanging by a mere loose screw or two. Coupled with the fact that it seemed just as likely as the flooring to give him some splinters, Jun decided he was better off without it and descended the staircase at a careful jog, his stomping down the steps slowed more so by the wickedness of the warped and uneven stairwell, until he arrived at the landing.

The living room lay at the bottom of the stairs and presented a new challenge for Junhui as there were many more obstacles lying scattered throughout the poorly lit room, both as a result of their earlier shenanigans and the fact that it was naturally more furnished than something like a bathroom. The messy room was filled with discarded clothes, empty bottles, crumbs and the like. Hao could easily have settled down anywhere in the room and so it warranted a more thorough investigation. Moving alongside the wall, Jun splayed his hand out on the wallpapered surface, cringing at the texture he felt of the moldy and water damaged material that seemed be losing the battle between sticking to the wall and crawling down to the floor, as he patted it in search of the light switch. In fact, it must’ve been more exposed drywall than wallpaper at that point. Eventually he was successful in finding the switch but this endeavour was pointless as it, too, didn’t turn on and unfortunately Jun ended up tripping over someone’s discarded backpack and smacking his funny bone on something as he stumbled. He winced and cradled his left arm for a moment and glared at the offending couch (turns out that even though most of it was obviously soft, he’d managed to hit himself on the hard backboard) was the cleanest of the three (not that that was saying much) which obviously held no sign of the younger man. The next couch to the right was stacked high with various jackets and Jun thought that perhaps Hao might’ve used them as blankets to burrow under. He took the time to pull all thirteen of them off, he found that that sofa was unfortunately empty as well when he was faced with the sight of the completely worn out and ratty fabric cushion. He also took a quick peek underneath the wretched old coffee table which barely seemed to be able to hold itself up anymore that lay across from it when, unbidden, he randomly recalled the baby photo Hao’s mum had shown him of the other curled up under a table with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie slightly crushed in his tiny hand and a dirty mouth covered in crumbs.

Apparently his sleepwalking problem had started young and this was one of the first instances where it had happened and as such his family hadn’t been used to handling it yet. As the story goes, Mrs. Xu had told him that a toddler aged-Minghao had gotten up from his nap, hungry, whilst his mum had been doing some work in their home office and instead of announcing the problem to his mother, he had decided to be a naughty little child and simply chose to help himself to a little snack. And what better than some cookies? However, it seemed that the sleep hadn’t fully shaken itself from the little boy’s system and he had fallen back to sleep midway through munching on the sweet treat. Unbeknownst to him he started sleepwalking and his little legs had unilaterally decided to carry him underneath the kitchen table to resume the afternoon nap. Unfortunately Hao’s mum hadn’t been given the memo and was left in a panic when she discovered her beloved son wasn’t in his cot. She had freaked out, searching high and low for him until she eventually found him lying on the cool tiles under the table and had snapped that iconic photo. Ironically mirroring the situation Jun was currently faced with 20-or-so years laters.

He recalled laughing about it when he’d heard the story and was briefly wrapped up in the warmth of those memories until he was snapped back into the present by stubbing his toe rather painfully straight on the corner edge of the third couch. “Shit!” he hissed quietly (or so he hoped) as the sudden throbbing in his big toe caused him to bend over in pain. Taking a deep breath, he continued onto said third couch. Unlike in Goldilocks, the third time wasn’t the charm, and after searching in, on, and around that sofa he was still aggravatingly Hao-less. He was nowhere else to be found amongst the other messes in the room and Jun decided it was time to move onto the next location.

Walking over to the kitchen and sliding the door open, he realized that there was possibly an even bigger mess in this room. The dawn’s dim hues barely lit up the room but he didn’t bother looking for the switch this time around as he’d learned that it would just have been useless given his earlier experiences. The indigo-lit room was in a state of utter decrepitness, much like the rest of the house he noted as he eyed the shattered and crumbling grey tile backsplash whilst he walked around the large seemingly non-functional refrigerator that jutted out, in case his boyfriend was hidden around the other side in the blind spot. Many of the aged, cupboards lay ajar as they were dangling off of their weakened hinges and as such revealed the fact that they held no Hao Hao within them and so Jun quickly decided against searching them further. Regardless of how teeny, flexible, and cat-like Hao was in looks and behaviour, he was still a full-grown human man at the end of the day and realistically probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze into the tiny little spaces anyways. He walked carefully across the space, trying not to trip over any of the plants and tree roots that had grown up into the cabin through the large spaces in the floorboards.

Moving onto the dining room, his first thought had initially been to search around the long table but he immediately changed his mind when he was struck by a chilly gust of wind. Shocked, he threw his head up and, to his horror, noticed that the source of the coldness was the front door which was ajar.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh shit, Hao Hao, no, no, no! You can’t be outside!” Junhui cursed as he dashed to the front door. He nearly knocked over an indoor hanging plant out of its pot in his haste but he paid it no mind aside from swiping the ghosts of the vine’s thin dead brown leaves out of his face. He was in such a rush that he nearly fell over a few times after losing his balance when hopping from foot-to-foot, the crunching of the dead leaves under his feet creating more cacophony as he tried to get his converse on in a hurry. The wind carried even more of them in and the cool temperature numbed his fingers as he slipped and he fumbled to do up the laces in haste. After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple seconds, Junhui was finally finished and instead of wasting more time going back to get his proper coat to protect him from the weather, he simply grabbed the nearest thing which happened to be a white denim jacket resting on the coat rack before running out the door.

Once outside, he was greeted by a grumpy grey sky and sharp, cutting wind. Cursing his past-self for all that time wasted searching inside, Jun wanted to smack his idiotic-self. His poor angel was outside somewhere in this mess and probably quite cold by now given his willowy stature, while Jun had been inside, and decently comfortable in the cabin. He strained to see outside in the darkness of the cloudy morning. Jun moved down the porch steps, calling out Hao’s name uselessly against the wind, hoping his boyfriend hadn’t wandered out too far. Jogging up the path, he swivelled his head back-and-forth trying to search every square inch of the driveway lest he miss out on anything important. Heart racing, adrenaline pumped through his body fuelling a fire inside of him as he desperately carried out his task. Until suddenly he froze, blood in his veins running cold as ice. _Foot prints._

He suddenly noticed footprints in the disturbed pile of leaves on the pathway that he’d somehow missed before. They were leading off the property and directly onto the main road. Picking up the pace, he raced as fast as he could to follow the trail, fighting against the slippery terrain of the sliding fronds as he struggled up the sloped driveway and onto the road.

His panting breaths were loud in his own ears and formed just the faintest mist in front of his eyes as he struggled to see which way the footprints were leading. With every passing second, the breeze seemed to be moving the fallen foliage, making it harder and harder to follow Minghao’s trail and the bile in his throat rose higher and higher as the fear increased. Working hard, however, he was able to get a glimpse at what he thought were Hao’s footprints somewhat further in the distance and took off running in that direction.

Eventually he began to slow as his body was tiring from the hard work he was putting it through but he refused to give up.

Sometime later (to be honest he wasn't sure if it had been minutes or hours at this point), however, he was rewarded for his hard work as he moved further down the road. The street ran through the forest and at a particularly densely wooded section of fir trees, the wind was stymied enough that Jun was able to gain a clear view of the footprint trail where this section was not disturbed by the wind but only by some person or creature that he presumed, _he prayed_ , had had to be Minghao. This glimmer of hope was enough to give him a renewed vigour as he burst forward again.

Follow the footprints. Where is he? Is he ok? Follow the footprints. How did he get so far? Is he warm enough? Follow the footprints. Ugh, I still don't fucking see him. What the hell? Seriously, WHERE ARE YOU?! I love you- I love you so much, you asshole. How on earth did the cold not wake you up?! Follow the footprints...

It all began to turn into a confusing mixture of darkness, leaves, and coldness as Jun ran on and on. Eventually his feelings of fear and worry all began to tangle into each other. Everything started to blur together in one big jumble of terror taking over him.

He only had one solid thing left he could hold on to. One more thought. Like a mantra reverberating in his consciousness:

_Where is Xu Minghao?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my lovelies! This is the last of the experimental chapters and all will be revealed (and concluded) in the next chapter. Not sure how long it will take for me to write/post that but I hope you'll be patient with me. As usual if y'all have any theories or opinions please let me know! I really love hearing from you guys <3
> 
> Also Hengarae is out now woo! What do y'all think? I'm really enjoying it - I think my favourite track is Left and Right. How about you guys?


	6. conclusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter.

Jun woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find the bed cold and void of a certain Xu Minghao. 

He had been startled awake by some sort of nightmare. Unable to quite recall the events of the dream when he tried to think about it, he was left only with the lingering unpleasant feelings sitting in his gut and shivers running down his spine. Realizing he was safe in the cabin that his friends had rented for New Year’s, he shut his eyes again and turned around to seek comfort in the warm arms of his boyfriend however he just ended up rolling over onto a cool, empty spot on the mattress. Blindly he stretched an arm out, patting around to see if he could find the other Chinese man but sighed and opened his eyes again when he found he had no such luck.

The small room was quite dark, cast only in a dreary light which seemed to serve more as means to highlight the grains of dust floating in the heavy air than as any means of illumination. The gloomy grey-blue hue was able to cast itself in through the window because the tattered grey rags of fabric were in such a state of disrepair that they simply hung limply against the wall and could barely even be called curtains as certainly weren’t functional in any way. The relative darkness meant that it was still must’ve been quite early, maybe 4 or 5 am by Jun’s reckoning, and definitely too early for Minghao to have actually gotten up for the day.

The thing was that Minghao had a tendency to sleepwalk and Jun really should’ve seen it coming as any changes to his daily routine tended to set the younger man off.

He lay still in the darkness of the bedroom for another minute just in case the younger man had simply popped off to the washroom, however his hopes proved fruitless and he reluctantly got up with a stretch and a groan once he realized his lover didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Picking up the clothes that lay pooled on the floor beside the bed from where Minghao had tossed them earlier, Jun swiped at his eyes as he tried to rub the sleep out of them. He put the jeans and sweater on quickly and stood up, now realizing that the door lay slightly ajar as his senses were starting to come back to him. He stepped out onto the cool, dirty and tried not to fall through any of the holes dangerously littering the old rotted wood. He prayed that he wouldn’t get any splinters or little critters crawling across his poor little feet, or worse yet simply fall through the floor onto the level below as the soundness of the structure seemed questionable at best. He took a moment to let his headrush settle a bit and wake up a little before walking towards the bedroom door and slipping it open a tad more, he grunted as he actually had to give it quite a shove in order to move it as it was quite stuck in place. When he did finally manage to push the beast open enough to get through, it roared out with a huge, whining groan (jeez those hinges really needed to be oiled up). Jun was completely incredulous at the fact that by some miracle it hadn’t seemed to disturb the others’ sleep. The alcohol must’ve put them to sleep more deeply than usual.

Upon exiting the bedroom he stepped out into the second floor hallway and peered out into the dark space but he couldn’t seem to find any Minghao shaped shadows in the void. He decided to check the washroom, which lay just to the left, first as at least he wouldn’t bother any of their sleeping friends that way. He hoped he’d find his boyfriend curled up asleep in the tub like that one time last summer - bathtubs weren’t common in Korea but they’d somehow managed to luck out with one in their apartment, a task Jun still didn’t know how they accomplished considering their relatively small budget. That luck, however, hadn’t carried over to the present moment. He sighed as the light didn’t seem to want to come on. He tried flicking it back and forth a couple times as it was really quite dark in there, but it must’ve burnt out at some point. To be honest he didn’t even really know why he tried. Given the general state of the wasted cabin, he should’ve known better than to expect that to work. Instead, Jun had to settle for squinting in the dim light provided by the tiny cracked window in the corner to allow him to see the bathroom. He eventually realized that there was a distinct lack of Minghao upon doing a scan of the room though - there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide in the small space of the typical wet room washroom but it was kinda difficult to see in there. Unfortunately there was no Hao sat on the gross toilet, cracked and covered with invasive black mold; no tub for him to sleep in; the mirror barely reflected his own image back at him through the heavy dust, creeping cobwebs, and cracks that had collected; and the red brown, rusted shower head seemed to offer no answers either as it rested with precarious unease halfway off the wall. Did the owner have no conscience? How could he rent out such a hovel? Why had they decided to stay at such a place. Honestly it looked like a scene from some horror flick. And uh it definitely wasn’t helped by the fact that it was quite literally some cabin in the woods. Surely there were better pensions out there that they could’ve stayed at?! Seriously, how had they not just walked away the minute they set eyes on the place, he wondered. But let bygones be bygones or some shit, he had a Minghao to find afterall. 

He went back out in the hallway and once again and pondered where to look next. He was debating between checking out some of the bedrooms in case the younger man had stumbled into someone else’s room and they’d just taken the Chinese boy in, knowing of his sleepwalking tendencies, or checking some of the communal areas downstairs first.  
Eventually Junhui decided to check downstairs next as he didn’t want to wake anyone else unnecessarily. Grimacing as he grabbed hold of loose and rickety wooden banister, it was in such bad shape that some of the pillars had completely fallen off and more still were left hanging by a mere loose screw or two. Coupled with the fact that, much like the floors above, it seemed that the planks were just waiting to give him some splinters if it hadn’t just rotted away already. Jun decided he was better off not bothering to hold the shoddy railing it and descended the staircase at a careful jog, his stomping down the steps slowed by the wickedness of the warped and uneven stairwell, until he arrived at the landing.

The living room lay at the bottom of the stairs and presented a new challenge for Junhui as there were many more obstacles lying scattered throughout the poorly lit room, both as a result of their earlier shenanigans and the fact that it was naturally more furnished than something like a bathroom. The messy room was filled with discarded clothes, empty bottles, crumbs and the like. Hao could easily have settled down anywhere in the room and so it warranted a more thorough investigation. Moving alongside the wall, Jun splayed his hand out on the wallpapered surface, cringing at the texture he felt of the moldy and water damaged material that had all but lost the battle between sticking to the wall and crawling down to the floor, as he patted it in search of the light switch. In fact, it must’ve been more exposed drywall (can you even call it drywall when it feels that damp?) than wallpaper at that point. Eventually he was successful in finding the switch but this endeavour was pointless as it, too, didn’t turn on and unfortunately Jun ended up tripping over someone’s discarded backpack and smacking his funny bone on something as he stumbled. He winced and cradled his left arm for a moment and glared at the offending couch (turns out that even though most of it was obviously soft, he’d managed to hit himself on the hard backboard) was the cleanest of the three (not that that was saying much) which obviously held no sign of the younger man. The next couch to the right was stacked high with various jackets and Jun thought that perhaps Hao might’ve used them as blankets to burrow under. He took the time to pull all thirteen of them off, he found that that sofa was unfortunately empty as well when he was faced with the completely worn out and ratty fabric cushion. He also took a quick peek underneath the wretched old coffee table which barely seemed to be able to hold itself up anymore that lay across from it when, unbidden, he randomly recalled the baby photo Hao’s mum had shown him of the other curled up under a table with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie slightly crushed in his tiny hand and a dirty mouth covered in crumbs.

Apparently his sleepwalking problem had started young and this was one of the first instances where it had happened and as such his family hadn’t been used to handling it yet. As the story goes, Mrs. Xu had told him that a toddler aged-Minghao had gotten up from his nap, hungry, whilst his mum had been doing some work in their home office and instead of announcing the problem to his mother, he had decided to be a naughty little child and simply chose to help himself to a little snack. And what better than some cookies? However, it seemed that the sleep hadn’t fully shaken itself from the little boy’s system and he had fallen back to sleep midway through munching on the sweet treat. Unbeknownst to him, his legs had unilaterally decided to carry him underneath the kitchen table to resume the afternoon nap. Unfortunately Hao’s mum hadn’t been given the memo and was left in a panic when she discovered her beloved son wasn’t in his cot. She had freaked out, searching high and low for him until she eventually found him lying on the cool tiles under the table and had snapped that iconic photo. Ironically mirroring the situation Jun was currently faced with 20-or-so years laters.

He recalled laughing about it when he’d heard the story and was briefly wrapped up in the warmth of those memories until he was snapped back into the present by stubbing his toe rather painfully straight on the corner edge of one of the third couch. “Shit!” he hissed quietly (or so he hoped) as the sudden throbbing in his big toe caused him to bend over in pain. Taking a deep breath, he continued onto the third couch. Unlike in Goldilocks, the third time wasn’t the charm, and after searching in, on, and around that sofa he was still aggravatingly Hao-less. He was nowhere else to be found amongst the other messes in the room and Jun decided it was time to move onto the next location.

Walking over to the kitchen and sliding the door open, he realized that there was impossibly an even bigger mess in this room. He didn’t even bother looking for the switch this time around as he’d learned that it would just have been useless given his earlier experiences. The dimness of the light coming into the room just painted more of a horror story-looking picture as he noted that the place was in a state of utter decrepitness, as he eyed shattered and crumbling grey tile backsplash whilst he walked around the large grey-brown refrigerator that jutted out, in case his boyfriend was hidden around the other side in the blind spot. Many of the aged, cupboards lay ajar as they were dangling off of their weakened hinges but even more of them had completely given up the fight with gravity. In their state, they revealed the fact that they held no Hao Hao within them and so Jun quickly decided against searching them further. Regardless of how teeny, flexible, and cat-like Hao was in looks and behaviour, he was still a full-grown human man (a paradoxically tall one given how small he seemed) at the end of the day and realistically probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze into the tiny little spaces anyways. He walked carefully across the space, trying not to trip over any of the plants and tree roots that had grown up into the cabin through the large spaces holes in the floor. The crunching of the dead leaves sounded eerily loudly in the quiet space as Jun moved around. 

His first thought had initially been to search around the long kitchen table but he was distracted and stilled when he thought he heard a sound coming from outside. He strained to hear what the sound was but it turned out he didn’t even need to do that as it was growing louder and louder. Eventually he recognized it as tires moving on snow. For a moment he was confused. Who would be out and about this early? Then again he was up so he couldn’t really say much seeing as he- hey ow! He winced as a ray of light managed to somehow reflect into his eyes through one of the forlorn windows. Wait, the sun was up? When did that happen? Had he really been searching that long? It felt like he was in some sort of time warp because he could’ve sworn the whole endeavour had only lasted a few minutes. Hmm...weird.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by a loud sound coming from outside. Was that… was someone crying? He’d been distracted and forgotten about the cars outside. Whoever had been driving must’ve parked outside. His curiosity peaked and he made his way towards the front door, whining as it moved about in the icy wind blasting through it. The chill shocked him but he picked up speed as he moved towards the door, nearly knocking over a dead indoor hanging plant out of its pot in his haste, but he paid it no mind aside from swiping the ghosts of the vine’s thin dead brown leaves out of his face. He was in such a rush that he nearly fell over a few times after losing his balance when hopping from foot-to-foot, the crunching of the dead leaves under his feet creating more cacophony as he tried to get his converse on in a hurry. The wind carried even more of them in and they simply joined the already huge pile laying inside. The freezing temperature numbed his fingers as he slipped and he fumbled to do up the laces in haste. After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple seconds, Junhui was finally finished and instead of wasting more time going back to get his proper coat to protect him from the weather, he simply grabbed the nearest thing which happened to be a white denim jacket resting on the coat rack before running out the door.

Once outside, he was greeted by snow falling down from the bleak, grey sky but that wasn’t what caught his attention. Instead he froze on the porch, staring at his friends stood in a semi circle out on the driveway. What was going on? He thought they’d all been asleep upstairs. When did they all come outside. And from the looks of it they’d all gone somewhere without him. Did they all go to the supermarket to get breakfast or something? But then where was Minghao? Why wasn’t he amongst them? And why was there some random blue car parked on the driveway along with Cheol’s and Hannie’s? And why wasn’t Hao’s kia there? And the sound he heard before? Yeah, it was definitely crying. What the fuck was happening?! Jun unfroze himself from his spot and moved as quickly as he could towards his friends without slipping on the ice and snow.

Joshua and Jeonghan stood on either side of Seungcheol, the total image of twins as they were both gripping the older man’s hands tight and sobbing while he laid a watery kiss on each of their lips in turn and- wait when did that happen? When did Seungcheol and Jeonghan turn into Seungcheol and Jeonghan and Joshua? Did they get that drunk last night that something crazy happened and he didn’t remember it? Had it happened after he’d gone to bed? But no, things were different! Jeonghan’s hair, that _had_ been styled in a very distinctive long black ponytail was now cropped in a much shorter platinum blonde style. He tore his eyes off of the threesome to take in the others.

Many of them were in similar states, crying or seeming like they were about to. Creating a sense of unease that was really throwing Jun off. Vernon was biting his lip, eyes red as he cradled an absolutely sobbing Seungkwan in his arms. They looked different too. Vernon had filled in a bit and seemed to be letting his hair live in its natural curl rather than straightened like usual whereas Boo seemed to have thinned out a bit but there wasn’t much more he was able to see as he was hidden away in the other’s arms quite completely.  
Jihoon’s once pink locks were now a natural shade of black, giving him a more mature like as he was held in place by Soonyoung who had an arm over his shoulders. The two both looking more muscular than he remembered, but he recalled that Jihoon had just started on a health kick and had started forcing Soonyoung to go to the gym with him when the urge struck him. Maybe their ventures had paid off more quickly than Jun had realized.

Chan and Seokmin had definitely changed some too, both looking older and more masculine than the way he usually painted them in his mind’s eye. Seokmin had always been one of the more emotional ones in their group and he wasn’t surprised that the younger man was crying given the overall state of their group but even their bright maknae Chan was looking absolutely destroyed, vulnerable emotions slipping past the usual strong and bold persona he liked to put on so that he wouldn’t worry the others too much.  
Mingyu’s puppy eyes, usually so merry and joyful, now appeared so sad as he blew into an abused tissue. Wonwoo seemed so lost next to him, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. A newspaper clutched tight in his hand.

What in the ever loving fuck was going on? His heart sinking deeper and deeper as he surveyed the scene.  
“Guys, what happened?” he cried out worriedly.

However no one responded to him. They didn’t even flinch.

“Guys seriously!” he called out again as he moved into the circle.

Again, no answer. 

“This isn’t funny! What the hell? What’s wrong?” he fumed. And suddenly he was brought back to his original question.

The world seemed to fade, going blurry around the edges as It all began to turn into a confusing mixture of darkness, snow, and coldness as Jun’s heart raced. His overwhelming feelings of fear and worry all began to tangle into each other in this odd and confusing situation. He’d always been more on the anxious side, Hao had always said, and now everything was just one big jumble of terror taking over him.

He only had one solid thing left he could hold on to. One more thought. Like a mantra reverberating in his consciousness:

_Where is Xu Minghao?_

That is, until he was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of Wonwoo’s broken, shaking voice. 

Instinctively, he pulled in closer to his best friend seeking to somehow comfort the other man even though he felt terrible, too. He tuned back in to catch what Wonwoo was saying as he realized the other man had pulled the newspaper up closer to read as it shook in the tremors of his trembling hands.  
“-Jeong Eunbyeol will face 15 years of imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 10 after she was found guilty of a hit and run incident, resulting in the death of the victim in the early hours of the morning on January 1st, 2015-”

“I can’t believe that bitch killed him and she only got 15 years! She hid and lied to the police for 9 years! She almost got away with it! And that’s it? 15 years!” Chan interjected furiously.  
“And then Jun, too!” Seungkwan’s watery voice blurted out.

Huh? Jun, too? Jun what?!

“Guys,” Jeonghan’s soft voice called as he stepped away from Sungcheol and moved to bring the youngest members into an almost motherly embrace “at least they found her. She’ll be in jail for a long time and she can’t hurt anyone in there. I know you miss them, I know it hurts - fuck, it hurt’s like fucking hell, I know - but maybe this what we all needed to heal and try to move on…” trailing off as his throat constricted.

“... we’ll never forget them but I know they wouldn’t want us to be sad forever. We have to keep living, if you can’t do it for yourselves right now then do it for them. I’m sure they’re at peace now wherever they are. They’ve got their justice. I’m sure they’d want us to be happy,” Seungchol continued where his boyfriend left off.

“Now we have 2 guardian angels watching over us,” Joshua added with quiet sincerity.

“But it’s not fair! They shouldn’t have to be guardian angels, they should still fucking be here with the rest of us. I miss them so much,” Seokmin replied as tears continued to paint his cheeks with physical trails of his sadness.

“Starting today, we’ll come here every year on the anniversary. We won’t forget about them. Ok, no matter what?” Soonyoung stated.

“Every year” Jihoon agreed and the others were quick to do so as well.

They? Whose they? Whose gone? What happened?

Jun, in utter shock and confusion at hearing their conversation tried searching for answers but no one seemed to be clarifying. All lost in their mourning. He tried turning to Wonwoo, tried to find answers from his best friend but when he reached out to grab the other man’s hand the result left him shaken to his core.

“Wonwoo, what?” he questioned, moving to bring the other’s hand into his own to try to finally get his attention. But Wonwoo didn’t give him an answer. No, he full-on body shivered and whipped his head up. Staring in Jun’s direction but seemingly not seeing him. Eyes quickly roaming over him and frantically searching around.

“I could’ve sworn I just felt something. It felt so cold…” Wonwoo breathed out. The younger man never finished his sentence and Jun’s attention was soon pulled elsewhere at the sound of his name.

“Jun.”

Jun whipped around to the source of the sound.

Minghao! Oh my god Minghao!

The younger man was standing just behind him - when had that happened? - and Jun rushed towards him to pull him into a tight embrace. 

He subconsciously let out a sigh of relief, some of the stress melting away just by having Minghao with him again. He took comfort in the sweet arms of his boyfriend for a moment before he was overwhelmed again with the situation.

Pulling back slightly, Jun still had Minghao in his arms but he was far enough away to be able to look into the other’s face easily whilst maintaining their conversation.

“Minghao, what’s happening?” Jun asked the younger frantically.

For a moment Minghao just stood there, looking up at him with a bittersweet smile painted on his face. “Jun, look…” he answered cryptically.

“Look at what?” Jun said, still confused.

Minghao just grabbed his hand and brought it upwards to eye level between the two of them.

For a moment, Jun didn’t notice anything but when he finally realized, he flinched backwards in sheer panic and confusion.

“Hao, what?” he cried out, staring at his own hand. It was still held firmly in Minghao’s smaller one but he suddenly realized that it was translucent. Mind racing, he looked back up at Hao and realized that the younger was in a similar condition. Not only that but the smaller man was more pale than usual and their was a faint trickle of crimson blood edging down onto his forehead from his hairline. 

“Are we…” he started, unable to finish the sentence.

“Ghosts?” Minghao finished for him. 

Jun just stared at him.

“Yeah” he finally answered in a small voice, pulling Jun back into his embrace.

Jun’s heart finally sank all the way down and he stood their limply, body numb in Minghao’s embrace.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Jun. I’ve been waiting a long time, ge” Minghao turned, whispering into his ear. So close that his lips brushed against Jun’s soft shell. Warm breath somehow tickling him even though they were apparently both dead.

“Didi, what happened?” he questioned the younger once again.

Minghao sighed sadly and moved back, bringing one of his hands up to cradle Jun’s face in his palm before brushing it against his forehead.

Suddenly, Jun was disoriented as bits and pieces of memories came flashing back to him in weird sequences. The scenery around him seemed to shift and change hazily, the only thing clear was Minghao who he gripped onto for dear life. 

He was brought back into the bedroom in the cabin that he’d shared with Minghao but instead of being on the bed he was somehow over it, watching over his own sleeping body in the third person as if he were watching a movie. Oddly detached. The Minghao beside him squeezed his hand comfortingly while the Minghao in the scene unfolding in front of him tossed and turned in before getting up and out of bed. Sleeping walking. The Junhui in front of him, however, hadn’t noticed this and continued to lie asleep.

Jun watched with mounting horror as the memory Minghao slowly made his way downstairs and somehow outside. Jun felt like he wanted to throw up when the past Minghao got onto the road, stumbling down it blindly in the dark. Somehow not waking in the cold of the blizzard forming around him, coming up to kiss his skin where it lay exposed from not having a jacket. It went on like that for a few minutes until he came to a turn in the road and Jun couldn’t do anything to stop. He watched on helplessly as a black car came speeding around the turn, its headlights flashing and horn blaring too late to stop as the tires screeched but early enough to wake Minghao up for the last few horrifying seconds. The driver had been texting and, distracted, hadn’t noticed Minghao on the dark road in the bad conditions until it was too late. When it was all said and done the car finally stopped a few meters down the road, thick smoke pouring out of the hood as the driver ran out of the car moving towards where his body lay broken, pushed onto an embankment facing the lake. 

“Oh my god! Oh my god! Are you ok?” the woman screamed frantically, dropping to her knees in front of Minghao. Jun watched as the woman put her fingers to Minghao’s neck searching for a pulse, flinging herself backwards in fear when she found none. Coming back with only a hand painted red with blood instead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck what have I done?!” she cried. “This can’t be happening! Oh my god!” she pleaded crying. “Call an ambulance!” Jun shouted and tried to run forwards to where his boyfriend’s body lay but it was useless. This was just a memory. There was nothing he could do now he realized as Minghao held him back carefully. He continued to watch it all unfold with a broken heart. The woman sat back on her knees frantically crying and hyperventilating by Minghao’s lifeless body for an indescribable amount of time until she finally stood back up. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry… b-but there’s nothing I can do for you know. I can’t, I just c-can’t” the woman stuttered backing away. Wiping her bloody hand on her black woolen coat, she stepped back to her car, slamming the door shut before fumbling her keys. She pulled them out of her coat pocket with shaking hands as she shoved them harshly into the ignition and cranked to the right. “C’mon, c’mon” she begged desperately praying for the car to start as the engine sputtered pathetically. She pushed her hand through her long black hair in frustration, crying when suddenly they vehicle whirred back to life. With one last look in her rearview mirror, leaving Minghao behind laying in the snow staining it red with blood.

“How could she just leave you? What kind of monster-”

“Shh, I know.”

Suddenly the scene shifted and they were back at the cabin once again. Jun watched himself wake up and start looking for Minghao. “It’s too late,” he whispered dejectedly. He watched as he got out of bed and went into the hallway. He watched as he scanned the washroom. Then he watched as he went down stairs, scoured the living room, searched the kitchen. Then he was outside. 

Somehow the actions seemed so familiar. The muscle memory tugged at his body...

“You’ve been repeating this for 9 years. Everyday...everyday you looked. You went back and you looked but you couldn’t handle it when you found me. Your mind rejected it, you couldn’t accept it. So you re-lived it everyday.” Minghao explained sadly.

The memory continued to propel forward Jun watched on as he saw that his past self had finally found Minghao out in the snow. Suddenly he was thrown back and began to remember the moment for himself instead of relying on Minghao’s memory and he felt like his heart was being wrenched from his chest as it all played out in front of him again. 

He peered into the distance, seeing something on the side of road but he couldn’t quite make out what it was with the dark and the snow obscuring his vision. Straining his eyes as hard as he could, he kept walking towards it until he realized - is that a person? Picking up the pace, he ran with all his might. No, it can’t be Minghao. Please don’t let it be Minghao. And yet as he started getting closer to the mysterious figure, he realized all his worst nightmares had come true.

“Minghao!” he let out a blood curdling scream, still running towards his boyfriend, but then suddenly

suddenly he wasn’t running towards Minghao anymore. 

The world was tumbling around. He felt pain coursing through his body as he lost control and was attacked by the world around him.

The embarkment hadn’t been as big or as stable as Jun had thought and in his hast one misplaced step sent him tumbling down, hurtling towards the lake below. 

Jun’s body was thrown into the icy depths and instantly he instinctively let out a gasp. The water was murky and the waterlogged clothes quickly became heavy, pulling him down. Or so he thought, which way was even up? He was so disoriented. He struggled, he really tried to pull back up to the surface but his limbs started going completely numb and soon he didn’t have the power to stay awake anymore. His vision started to blur and go black when he was suddenly ripped out of the memory and pulled into the present once again. 

“I’m...I died...We’re…” he sputtered out, small and dismayed, looking back into Minghao’s eyes. And he couldn’t help but suddenly notice a few water droplets dripping off of him, running down from hair and clothing and onto the ground.

“Dead” Minghao concluded. “We’ve been dead for a long time now, Jun. I think it’s finally time for us to move on,” he continued, gesturing towards the white light. It was so blindingly bright that he couldn’t see through to the other side. It must be their gateway to the other side, but he could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“You weren’t ready yet,” Minghao said aloud and Jun jumped. 

“Did you just read my mind?” Jun asked, staring at Minghao incredulously.

Instead of answering, Minghao just giggled. Even now Jun thought it claimed the title of best sound in the world. Taking a step forwards he collected Minghao’s hand in his own again and grasped the delicate fingers tight. He started following his boyfriend and the walked closer towards the light but halfway there he came to an abrupt halt.

“What about…” he trailed off, turning his head back in the direction of their friends.

Minghao nodded and they changed course towards where their friends were standing.

“I love you guys.” And he meant it. With his whole heart. These eleven men had taken care of him in Korea and they’d become his family the same as if there were his flesh and blood. He took his time saying his goodbyes. Ruffling Chan’s hair, a fist bump to Vernon, a hug to Joshua and so on and so forth as he moved around the group. Minghao, likewise, was doing much the same with his own farewells he noticed as he caught the younger grasping Mingyu in a tight hug. And if he noticed that Minghao was crying? Well he wouldn’t say anything about it. His own eyes were hardly dry themselves anyways. Finally, he got to Wonwoo and Jun would be lying if he said he wouldn’t miss him just the teeniest tiniest little bit more. He was his best friend after all and after Minghao he was closest to the little fox. Making his peace and giving Wonwoo his last hug goodbye, he startled when Wonwoo reacted below him.

“I swear guys! I know I felt something. Do you think they’re here?” Wonwoo exclaimed aloud.

“Y’know, Wonwoo’s always been pretty in touch with the spiritual world. His 6th sense is way more developed than the average person. I wonder why,” Minghao commented from where he suddenly appeared right by Jun’s side again, ending the statement with a casual shrug. “Are you ready?” he asked, dark eyes searching Jun’s own.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Besides, wherever you go, I’ll follow,” Jun answered assuredly.

“Together forever,” Minghao promised, bringing their linked hands up to lay a gentle kiss on Jun’s skin.

“I love you,” Jun breathed, a smile slowly creeping onto his face.

“I love you, too,” Minghao replied with a matching smile on his face, “Let’s go.”

Hand-in-hand they stepped into the gateway. Together they travelled into the afterlife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it took me so long to give you guys the final update. I've actually had the ending planned out the whole time (please don't hate me too much). I tried to make it as happy an ending as I could but I definitely made myself cry while writing this chapter. I'm so sorry! 
> 
> The whole fic was actually inspired by the music video for "Gravity" by Ong Seongwoo and I highly recommend checking it out!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed and I'd really appreciate it if you left a comment. Have a lovely day ~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! And a special thank you to those of you who encouraged me to write this (you know who you are ^^). This is simultaneously my first JunHao and Seventeen fic and I've been really excited but also really nervous to post it. Sorry if there was anything weird grammar-wise but I was having some trouble actually writing this down and I finally just forced myself to sit down and write. I would really appreciate feedback in your comments but please be gentle. 
> 
> As I said before, I hope you all stay happy and healthy in these trying times. Fighting!
> 
> ~Good night


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